Saturday, June 2, 2007

V for Vendetta

I'm a little late to the game. I didn't know anything about V for Vendetta (the movie or the graphic novel). I don't think WB did a good job marketing this movie when it was out in the theaters. It just didn't seem interesting to me.

Then, someone, I forget who (sorry!) suggested I check the movie out. So we added it to our NetFlix queue and checked it out.

Wow!

Spoilers below, so either see the movie or send complaints to /dev/null.It's actually been a couple months since I first saw V. Both Holly and I loved this movie. Like I said, I didn't know much about this movie. I only knew that Natalie Portman was in it. That's all. That reminds me of the first Matrix movie. I didn't know anything about the movie and only went to see it because some friends wanted to see it. I was blown away. To go see something new and "revolutionary" like the Matrix with no previous knowledge or expectations was fantastic.

Enter V for Vendetta. Again, no expectations or prior knowledge. I loved the V character, but didn't immediately place the voice. At one point, while Evey was being tortured, I thought, "Hey! That sounds like Agent Smith," but let that go until the end of the movie. Seeing Hugo Weaving's name go by as V made me go "OH!!!". Weaving was amazing as V. His ability to show V's emotions though voice and body language without ever showing his face is awesome. I think some credit is due to the cinematographer because sometimes you notice the camera lingering on V's mask, and you just feel what you're supposed to.

This movie was awesome. The characters you're supposed to like: Finch, Deitrich and Evey (Natalie Portman), you do. And the ones you're not supposed to like: Sutler and Creedy, you don't. Even though V does some horrible things during the movie, you never lose the "hero worship" of him. You never think he's a bad guy. You're always behind him and his goals. Or is that just me.

The story had many political overtones and warns of a bleak future. Reading IMDB's forums, it seems people think the movie is directed at Bush's presidency, but I've also read that the movie is VERY true to the graphic novel and that was made pre-Bush.

On my upcoming vacation, I plan to read my copy of the V for Vendetta graphic novel and can make my own judgement as to how the movie compared.

See this movie. I think it's probably one of the top 5 movies I've seen in the past 10 years. Possibly one of the top 5 I've seen ever, but I'm not ready to make that claim yet. The first rule in rating movies is you don't talk about rating movies. Or something.